Featured at CCHR’s International Headquarters is the
“Psychiatry Kills” Exhibit, which documents a 300-year history of betrayal
by psychiatrists and psychologists and shows the decline of society under
their influence.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) International headquarters in Los Angeles, California

CCHR is a non-profit, public benefit
organization dedicated to investigating and exposing psychiatric violations of
human rights. It also ensures that criminal acts within the psychiatric industry
are reported to the proper authorities and acted upon.

CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and the internationally
acclaimed author, Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the
State University of New York, Syracuse. At that time, the victims of psychiatry
were a forgotten minority group, warehoused under terrifying conditions in
institutions around the world. Because of this, CCHR penned a Mental
Health Declaration of Human Rights that has served as its guide for mental
health reform.

All great organizations set forth codes by which they align their
purposes and activities. The Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights
articulates the guiding principles of CCHR and the standards against
which human rights violations by psychiatry are relentlessly
investigated and exposed.

A. No person shall be given psychiatric or psychological treatment
against his or her will.

B. No person, man, woman or child, may be denied his or her personal
liberty by reason of mental illness, so-called, without a
fair jury trial by laymen and with proper legal representation.

C. No person shall be admitted to or held in a psychiatric
institution, hospital or facility because of their religious, political
or cultural beliefs and practices.

D. Any patient has:

1. The right to be treated with dignity as a human being,

2. The right to hospital amenities without distinction as to race,
color, sex, language, religion, political opinion, social origin or
status by right of birth or property.

3. The right to have a thorough, physical and clinical examination by
a competent registered general practitioner of one’s choice, to ensure
that one’s mental condition is not caused by any undetected and
untreated physical illness, injury or defect, and the right to seek a
second medical opinion of one’s choice.

4.The right to fully equipped medical facilities and appropriately
trained medical staff in hospitals, so that competent physical, clinical
examinations can be performed.

5. The right to choose the kind or type of therapy to be employed,
and the right to discuss this with a general practitioner, healer or
minister of one’s choice.

6. The right to have all the side effects of any offered treatment
made clear and understandable to the patient, in written form and in the
patient’s native language.

7.The right to accept or refuse treatment but in particular, the
right to refuse sterilization, electroshock treatment, insulin shock,
lobotomy (or any other psychosurgical brain operation), aversion
therapy, narcotherapy, deep sleep therapy and any drugs producing
unwanted side effects.

8. The right to make official complaints, without reprisal, to an
independent board which is composed of non-psychiatric personnel,
lawyers and lay people. Complaints may encompass any torturous, cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment received while under
psychiatric care.

9. The right to have private counsel with a legal advisor and to take
legal action.

10. The right to discharge oneself at any time and to be discharged
without restriction, having committed no offense.

11. The right to manage one’s own property and affairs with a legal
advisor, if necessary, or if deemed incompetent by a court of law, to
have a State-appointed executor to manage such until one is adjudicated
competent. Such executor is accountable to the patient’s next of kin,
or legal advisor or guardian.

12. The right to see and possess one’s hospital records and to take
legal action with regard to any false information contained therein
which may be damaging to one’s reputation.

13. The right to take criminal action, with the full assistance of
law enforcement agents, against any psychiatrist, psychologist or
hospital staff for any abuse, false imprisonment, assault from
treatment, sexual abuse or rape, or any violation of mental health or
other law. And the right to a mental health law that does not indemnify
or modify the penalties for criminal, abusive or negligent treatment of
patients committed by any psychiatrist, psychologist or hospital staff.

14. The right to sue psychiatrists, their associations and colleges,
the institution, or staff for unlawful detention, false reports, or
damaging treatment.

15. The right to work or to refuse to work, and the right to receive
just compensation on a pay-scale comparable to union or state/national
wages for similar work, for any work performed while hospitalized.

16. The right to education or training so as to enable one better to
earn a living when discharged, the right of choice over what kind of
education or training is received.

17. The right to receive visitors and a minister of one’s own
faith.

18. The right to make and receive telephone calls and the right to
privacy with regard to all personal correspondence to and from anyone.

19. The right to freely associate or not with any group or person in
a psychiatric institution, hospital or facility.

20. The right to a safe environment without having in the environment
persons placed there for criminal reasons.

21. The right to be with others of one’s own age group.

22.The right to wear personal clothing, to have personal effects and
to have a secure place in which to keep them.

23. The right to daily physical exercise in the open.

24. The right to a proper diet and nutrition and to three meals a
day.

25.The right to hygienic conditions and non-overcrowded facilities,
and to sufficient, undisturbed leisure and rest.

______________________________

Acknowledged by the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights
Commission as responsible for “many great reforms” that protect people from
psychiatric abuse, CCHR has documented thousands of individual cases that
demonstrate psychiatric drugs and often-brutal psychiatric practices create
insanity and cause violence. A major cause of the drug problem worldwide is the
psychiatrist, who for decades has used his influence as a medical doctor to push
extremely dangerous and addictive mind-altering drugs on persons of all
ages—some as young as one year old.

Since 1969, CCHR’s work has helped to save the lives of millions and
prevented needless suffering for millions more. Many countries have now mandated
informed consent for psychiatric treatment and the right to legal
representation, advocacy, recourse and compensation for patients. In some
countries, the use of psychosurgery and electroshock on children is banned.

While CCHR does not provide medical or legal advice, it works closely with
attorneys and medical doctors and supports medical, but not psychiatric,
practices.

One of CCHR’s primarily concerns with psychiatry is its unscientific
diagnostic system. Unlike medical diagnosis, psychiatrists categorize symptoms
only, not disease. Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., says, “The notion of scientific
validity, though not an act, is related to fraud. Validity refers to the extent
to which something represents or measures what it purports to represent or
measure. When diagnostic measures do not represent what they purport to
represent, we say that the measures lack validity...The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) published by the American
Psychiatric Association…is notorious for low scientific validity.”

Featured at CCHR’s International Headquarters is the
“Psychiatry Kills” Exhibit, which documents a 300-year history of betrayal
by psychiatrists and psychologists and shows the decline of society under
their influence.

Understanding this fraudulent diagnostic premise, we can see why psychiatry and
psychology, entrusted with billions of dollars to eradicate the problems of the
mind, have created and perpetuated them. Their drug panaceas cause senseless
acts of violence, suicide, sexual dysfunction, irreversible nervous system
damage, hallucinations, apathy, irritability, anxiousness, psychosis and death.
And with virtually unrestrained psychiatric drugging of so many of our
schoolchildren, it is no surprise that the largest age group of murderers today
are our 15-to-19-year-olds.

CCHR’s members include prominent doctors, lawyers, artists, educators,
civil and human rights representatives and professionals who see it as their
duty to “expose and help abolish any and all physically damaging practices in
the field of mental healing.” They work to accomplish these clearly stated
aims with many like-minded individuals and groups, including politicians,
teachers, health professionals, government and law enforcement officers and
media.

Today, 133
chapters strong in 34 countries, CCHR has established itself as a powerful
human rights advocacy group and each year presents its Human
Rights Awards to individuals who display exemplary courage in the worldwide
fight for the restoration of basic human rights in the mental health area.

This is must reading to understand the field of psychiatry today. Written in
1970, it is ironic that 24 years later, Dr. Szasz would say, "psychiatry is
the single most destructive force that has affected American society within the
last 50 years."

Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of
New York Health Science Center, co-founder of CCHR, and author of more than 25
books, has been internationally acclaimed as “one of the most important
writers in present-day psychiatry.”

Review (Amazon.com)

The Manufacture of Madness is a fine historical analysis of psychiatry and
the mental health movement, drawing comparisons between the medical
establishment's treatment of deviants as mental patients and the Inquisition's
treatment of deviants as witches. Radical, perhaps, although it must have seemed
much more radical in 1970, when first published. Dr. Szasz knew his material
well, having worked for twenty years as a psychiatrist in this country prior to
writing the book.

His views were considered heretical by his colleagues (an irony that he makes
much of) because he argued, quite strongly, that institutional psychiatry is
dehumanizing both to patients and society as a whole because it deprives these
people of all rights, treats them as objects to be repaired, and submits them to
cruel tortures in the name of therapy. He went on to declare that mental illness
itself is a myth; there has never been a scientific basis for treating social
and behavioral deviance as stemming from the same causes as physical illnesses,
nor reason to try to cure it. His central thesis is that institutional
psychiatry fills the same role in modern times as the Inquisition did until only
a few hundred years ago--a system of control and suppression of social deviants.

Another review at Amazon (concerning homosexuality)

One particular chapter -- "The Product Conversion" -- does a
brilliant job of demolishing the theory that homosexuality is a mental illness.
It dissects every argument made to this effect, and shows that homosexuality is
nothing more than a variant of human sexuality, in much the same way that being
left-handed is nothing more than a variant of laterality. Szasz does a brilliant
job of showing the hypocrisy of the medico-legal establishment in terms of that
establishment (1) declaring that homosexuality is a mental illness (this is no
longer the official position of the American Psychological or American
Psychiatric Associations) while (2) declaring that homosexuality is a crime. It
cannot be both, as Szasz points out in his analysis -- while criminals can be
mentally ill, homosexual status as opposed to conduct cannot be both criminal
**and** a mental illness. The book is worth purchasing for this chapter alone,
and I recommend it to any person interested in beating back efforts to
remedicalize and recrimenalize the status of gay people. This chapter also
reveals the manner in which religious ideology masquerades as psychiatric
doctrine, ruthlessly exposing the epistemological error made by those who cling
to outdated and cruel theories in this regard.

Part of another review at Amazon.com

'The Manufacture of Madness' by right wing libertarian
"anti-psychiatrist" Thomas Szasz is a comparative essay showing the
similarity and growth of the "religion of mental illness" from the
Inquisition, the persecution of heretics, and the days of witch hunting. Szasz
contends that the idea of "mental illness" is in fact a category
mistake involving a false notion of "illness". Much of this book is
spent demonstrating how society in the form of the "mental health
movement" seeks to root out dissenters and heretics in order to protect the
reigning order (or to achieve a new scientistic based order controlled by
doctor-bureaucrats - the modern day utopia of "the Brave New World").
Szasz finds notable similarity between the mental health movement and the
Inquisition and persecution of witches. Szasz observes that society has always
had certain individuals who defied convention and thus posed a threat to the
reigning order.